Typical restaurant type cooking unit ventilators have in the past been custom-built and installed by securement to supporting wall or ceiling surfaces of the restaurant kitchen and/or by securement to the cooking unit itself, which makes the installation relatively time consuming and expensive, and may interfere with access to portions of the cooking unit for maintenance or other purposes. Need for connection to the wall or ceiling of the building to support the ventilator also reduces flexibility in determining where to initially install the ventilating unit, as well as reducing flexibility in future relocating of the ventilator, should such be desired. On the other hand, support of the ventilator on the cooking unit itself interferes with removal and replacement of defective cooking units and use of the ventilator with cooking units for which it was not specifically designed.
An attempt has been made to overcome these difficulties in prior restaurant cooking unit ventilator units, by providing the ventilator as an integral unit in itself, which can stand by itself on the floor of the kitchen and which requires no support (excepting air and gas flow ducting) from the walls or ceiling of the kitchen or from the cooking unit, as in the ventilator disclosed in Peterson U.S. Pat. No. 2,868,108. However, even in the structure disclosed in such patent, it is suggested that the hood be secured to the cooking unit. Moreover, problems of insulation of the hot cooking units from areas to the side and back thereof, and substantially complete gathering of exhaust and cooking fumes from the cooking units, are not entirely and satisfactorily solved by floor-supported ventilating units of known type. Thus, however, such floor supported, independent ventilators, of which I am aware, have been less than completely satisfactory for several reasons.
Accordingly, the objects and purposes of this invention include provision of:
A floor-supported, independent ventilator for cooking units, which requires no attachment to the wall or ceiling of the kitchen nor to the cooking unit or units received therein.
A ventilator, as aforesaid, including stack connections for exhausting air and vapors generated by the cooking unit and clean air inlet stack means for supplying fresh air to the cooking area.
A ventilator, as aforesaid, of hoodlike form having a continuous open air space at the top, back and sides to assist in insulating nearby objects from heat generated by the cooking unit and wherein such insulating effect is further assisted by circulation of air from the fresh air inlet through such top, back and sides, and wherein the same circulation of air is guided through the hollow top and side walls of the hood toward the cooking area of the cooking unit to sweep cooking vapors positively toward the exhaust stack for removal from the kitchen.
A ventilator, as aforesaid, particularly adapted to use with cooking units, such as deep fat fryers, etc., having forwardly disposed cooking areas and rearwardly disposed, upstanding exhaust flues for combustion products or the like, and wherein the ventilator without attachment to the cooking unit maintains separation of the flue gases from the cooking area gases for a sufficient length of their travel through the exhaust portion of the ventilator as to permit filtering of only the cooking area gases while permitting a control of flow rate of the flue gases.
A ventilator, as aforesaid, in which the passage of incoming air through the hollow top and side walls is controlled for enhanced uniformity of air flow of the forward portion of the top and side walls toward the cooking area, and wherein such air flow control within such hollow walls assists in rigidifying the ventilator structure.
A ventilator, as aforesaid, which is simple in structure and readily constructed, and which is readily and rapidly installable.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons acquainted with apparatus of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspecting the accompanying drawings.